Contranyms

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yeah, hi, my name is Eric.

Hi, Eric.

I’m from Bozeman, Montana.

All right.

Welcome to the program.

How are things in Bozeman?

I’ve actually got a word that just got me in a twist. I have not come to terms with, and I’m sorry for the pun, but I cannot come to terms with the word sanction.

The word sanction is just so weird because unless I give you some context for that word, you can’t know what I mean if I say the government sanctions your program. It’s got two, apparently, I’d say, at least two diametrically opposing meanings.

Very well put.

The main thing I want to ask is why. Not even what, but why. It’s like so strange that a word could have two meanings that are entirely the opposite.

There are plenty of words that have different meanings. You know, and there are homonyms and all kinds of things. But this word is just strange.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s an example of what we call a contronym or a Janus word. Are you familiar with that word, J-A-N-U-S?

I have not heard that. I’ve heard of contronym, but not Janus.

Janus was the Roman god of portals and doorways and beginnings. And he had two faces, one which faced one way and one faced the other way. And that’s where we get words like janitor and January, which is the opening to the new year.

Very good.

So Janus words. Yeah, sanction is one of those because exactly as you said, it can mean to penalize somebody or to authorize somebody.

Each of those meetings comes from a different path from the same source.

And that’s where we get the difference, right?

Right.

They both go back to a word that has its origins in Latin that has to do with sacredness, sanctifying, sanctuary, that kind of idea.

And so originally it was a law, a law that’s sacred.

So it could be a law for something or a law against something, right?

So in the beginning there wasn’t necessarily a plus or a minus or any kind of negative or positive value on it.

Right.

But these two meanings over time forked and became strong on their own, in their own contexts.

And here we find them side by side in the dictionary.

It looks very odd.

Yeah, you’re exactly right, Eric.

Oh, thank you so much.

So, Eric, tell your friends Martha and Grant sanction what you said.

All right.

All right, I will.

Whatever that means.

Right.

But we didn’t sanction you, though.

We sanctioned what you said, but we didn’t sanction you.

Thanks a lot for solving my mystery.

Sure.

Thank you for calling, Eric.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

There’s an article in the language newsletter Verbatim from a number of years ago by David Galeff called The Trouble with Janus Words.

We’ll try to link to that on the website.

He’s got a lot of detail about these two-faced words.

Yay.

Call us with your questions about words and language, 877-929-9673, or email them to words@waywordradio.org.